Marina Abramović says her initial reaction to Indigenous Australians has since changed and her experiences with them ‘deeply and indelibly informed my entire life and art’.
Photograph: Remi Chauvin/Mona

New York-based performance artist Marina Abramović has attempted to clarify an inflammatory passage from an uncorrected proof of her forthcoming memoir, in which she refers to Indigenous Australians as “really strange and different” people, who “look terrible” and “look like dinosaurs”.

A photo of the excerpt, which publishers have confirmed will be removed from the final copy, began circulating on social media this week; in it, Abramović writes about her first encounter with Indigenous Australians when, following the 1979 Biennale of Sydney, she and her creative collaborator and then-lover, German performance artist Frank “Ulay” Uwe Laysiepen, spent six months in the Great Victorian Desert with the Pitjantjatjara tribe.

“Aborigines are not just the oldest race in Australia; they are the oldest race on the planet. They look like dinosaurs,” she writes.

They are really strange and different, and they should be treated as living treasures. Yet they are not.

“But at the same time, when you first meet them, you have to put effort into it. For one thing, to Western eyes they look terrible. Their faces are like no other faces on earth; they have big torsos (just one bad result of their encounter with Western civilisation is a high sugar diet that bloats their bodies) and sticklike legs.”

The passage from her forthcoming memoir, Walk Through Walls, has attracted widespread criticism on social media, accumulating under the hashtag #TheRacistIsPresent. In a statement posted earlier today to Facebook, Abramović said the page in question came from diary entries that reflected her “initial reaction to these people”, which has since changed:

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“I have the greatest respect for Aborigine people, to whom I owe everything,” she wrote. “The time I spent with members of the Pijantjatjara and Pintupi tribes in Australia was a transformative experience for me, and one that has deeply and indelibly informed my entire life and art.

“The description contained in an early, uncorrected proof of my forthcoming book is taken from my diaries and reflects my initial reaction to these people when I encountered them for the very first time way back in 1979. It does not represent the understanding and appreciation of Aborigines that I subsequently acquired through immersion in their world and carry in my heart today.”

Artist Katie West, who is of Yindjibarndi descent, told the Guardian that Abramović’s words were “a perfect example of the continuing effects of colonisation”.

“In essence, this is no different to the diary entries of early colonisers and more recent policy makers,” said West. “The Indigenous Australian population is made up of individuals with their own lived experiences. In this excerpt, it seems this hasn’t crossed Abramović’s mind, and given the nature of her work, this is quite baffling.”

West said: “Abramović’s words are clearly racist and it doesn’t surprise me that this was written in 1979, but at this point there really is no excuse for the level of ignorance that allowed editors to miss overtly racist language. I mean it takes nothing to Google ‘Indigenous Australian art politics’ for a bit more context.”

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Abramović has previously said that her time in the Australian desert had a huge influence on her work. “It was a huge shift in my consciousness when I was there,” she told Fairfax Media in 2015. “The whole idea of stillness and immateriality came out of this experience.”

That idea of stillness informed her early 1980s piece Nightsea Crossing, in which Abramović and Ulay sat across from each other, completely still, for seven hours a day for 90 days in total. It also pervaded her celebrated 2010 piece The Artist is Present, for which more than 1,500 visitors to New York’s Museum of Modern Art – including Björk, James Franco and, in an affecting surprise, her ex-partner Ulay – sat in a chair opposite her for five minutes at a time over a seven hour day.

Marina Abramović and Frank “Ulay” Uwe Laysiepen sit across from each other during Abramović’s piece The Artist is Present

Abramović most recently made headlines when she told German newspaper Taggespiegel that she had had three abortions, because she felt having children would be disastrous to her art. “One only has limited energy in the body, and I would have had to divide it,” Abramović said. “In my opinion that’s the reason why women aren’t as successful as men in the art world. There’s plenty of talented women. Why do men take over the important positions? It’s simple. Love, family, children – a woman doesn’t want to sacrifice all of that.”

• Walk Through Walls will be released by Penguin Random House in November 2016